America in need of its own perestroika

Brian Till

Saturday, April 4, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Mikhail Gorbachev has been on a relatively quiet tour of the United States over the past two weeks, stopping in Florida, Illinois and Texas in addition to the more frequented New York and Washington, D.C.

He’s come on this trip, which included a day at Ronald Reagan’s alma mater, Eureka College, with a clear message: The United States needs its own perestroika.

It’s a message he’s brought to the president and vice president, a lunch with nearly half of the U.S. Senate, and the thousands who have attended his events.

I met him here in Texas, where he spoke before a petrochemicals conference in support of his Global Green Foundation’s work to push Texas alongside California as a leader of the green movement in the U.S.

The term perestroika, of course, is associated with changes in the Soviet system that Gorbachev first advocated in 1984, and then implemented over the course of his leadership from 1985-1991.

Though there’s clearly a significant difference between our own dynamic economy and the archaic, managed system that Gorbachev sought to rebuild, there remains an important message that should not be dismissed.

Part of the restructuring that Gorbachev is advocating is cemented by a shift to a green economy, but part of it deals with a deeper pattern. “We must expect that the outcome of this crisis will be the replication of the same old economy we have had for the past 50 years,” Gorbachev said. “Let us not hope that the old model will be replicated.”

Gorbachev, it should be noted, has been a believer in the free market and a proponent of democracy since days well before his climb to power; these comments are not a communist’s ideologically steeped condemnations.

But liberalization and deregulation of the U.S. economy — while important in their historical context, Gorbachev noted — today “results in overconsumption and hyperprofits at any cost without regard to social or environmental needs.”

He contends that a model in which the U.S. consumes so voraciously while exporting so little is rather dangerous, creating the gross trade deficits and massive imbalances that plague globalization today — and afflict the planet to a perhaps irreversible extent.

Gorbachev’s also speaking to a change of values, to some degree. The American system we’ve exported to the world for years — through the International Monetary Fund, diplomatic pressure and other means — puts the free market on a sanctified pedestal, while decrying government influence and social spending.

I agree with Gorbachev and will go a step further: There’s an unequivocal decline of humanism in the hue of capitalism that America now exports. In my mind, there are simply places in which the free market — for all its power to innovate and generate wealth — is not a perfect end.

Shouldn’t our outrage — those of us who can afford astronomical health care — be anchored by the fact that so many are forced to go without, as opposed to by the dent that such services make in our own pockets? And isn’t it alarming that despite the economic logic of living a more efficient lifestyle — in terms of the investments we make to our homes and the cars we drive — we instead remain locked in the hydrocarbon era?

We’ve been rather enamored of unrestrained capitalism for decades, fascinated and tranquilized by the comforts and technologies it brought to bear. But it’s important that we recognize something our own politicians are failing to tell us. Once they’re done chastising and vilifying Wall Street, a difficult truth will remain: We cannot return to the way we lived before; we can’t afford it, and the planet cannot endure it.

At 78, Gorbachev remains both sharp and active. As a young politician he was noted for his energy, and the intensity remains. He spent Sunday, one of his few days off on the trip, rehashing a speech with his longtime aide and translator to incorporate more ideas he feared Americans weren’t hearing reverberated.

He, as a young Soviet politician, had the courage to speak about a stiff reality other pols preferred to look past. Two and a half decades later, he’s once again compelled to speak, as our own leaders illustrate their preference for show trials in the face of the incredible overhaul our nation needs.

Brian Till is a columnist for Creators Syndicate.